asked the Minister for Local Government whether there is any legal authority which empowers a local authority to recover from the tenant of a vested cottage on the sale of such cottage any money which he received ten years previously as home assistance during illness or unemployment from such local authority.
Ceisteanna — Questions. Oral Answers. - Sales of Vested Cottages: Home Assistance Payments.
22.
Where a public assistance authority is at any time of opinion that a person to whom public assistance has been paid is able to repay all or portion of the assistance, the authority is empowered by section 28 of the Public Assistance Act, 1939, to recover the amount.
I have no functions in relation to the exercise of this power of recovery.
Could the Minister say whether there is any limit within which these moneys may be recovered? Is there any time limit?
That would be a matter for the courts to decide.
Could the Minister say what the legislation provides for?
It provides that if and when such a person is in a position to repay the amount, the local authority is empowered to recover it.
Even up to the day before he dies, it can be recovered?
That is the position, as far as I can see.
If this is a debt to a local authority, is it possible that it can be statute barred in the same way as an ordinary private debt can be statute barred?
I have no information about that.
Is it possible for a local authority to recover money from a person who got it by reason of illness or unemployment ten or 20 years ago, while in similar circumstances a private debt owing for that long period could not be recovered?
That would be a matter for decision by the courts. If the person concerned was under the impression that the Statute of Limitations applied, he could resist the effort of the local authority to get it back. Section 28 of the Public Assistance Act empowers public assistance authorities to recover the money.
Does the Minister not think it is archaic, in this year 1962, that the local authority which gave money ten or 20 years ago should now be entitled to recover it?
That is asking for an opinion.
That is the law.
I am asking the Minister does he not agree that it is archaic that a person can be compelled to repay to the local assistance authority money that was given to him ten or 20 years previously, that the local authority can recover the money out of the sale of a labourer's cottage? In this year 1962, that type of mentality should have no place in the law of this country.
That is the condition on which the assistance is given.
Does that mean that anybody who receives home assistance and whose circumstances improve years afterwards is liable to have to refund it?
The local authority is empowered to look for the money back.